Politics of Presidential Unilateral Action

This paper discusses President Obama’s executive order 13616 on Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment, a proactive policy set to consolidate fragmented regulations towards broadband fiber optics installation in Federal Rights of Way (ROW) by carriers.

The Executive Order for Accelerating Broadband Infrastructure Deployment

On June 14, 2012, President Obama issued an executive order to accelerate broadband infrastructure deployment. Specifically, the executive order formalized the setup of a working group comprising various government agencies, such as the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs, and the US Postal Service to establish federal broadband procedures and requirements, and a uniform process for contracts and permits on federal lands for broadband carriers to lease Federal assets for broadband deployment. The working group is also tasked to enable the deployment of conduit for broadband facilities during highway construction, as part of the “dig once” initiative to reduce the frequency and costs for digging the highway. The executive order also calls for federal assets and leasing requirements to be posted on agency websites, and enable public tracking of broadband deployment projects through the Federal Infrastructure Projects Dashboard.

Rationale for the Executive Order

President Obama’s administration recognized the important of broadband accessibility. They see broadband access as an essential tool to improve the global competitiveness of United States. However, a proportion of the population lack adequate access to broadband, either due to unavailability of such services, or current installations were unable to keep up with growing traffic volumes due to increased use of mobile devices. Expanding access and upgrading services would require new infrastructure deployment.

The federal government owns approximately 30% of US lands and owns or leases approximately 10,000 buildings nationwide, many of these provide excellent pathways for broadband infrastructure. However, broadband carriers seem to face significant challenges when working to secure access to federal ROW or buildings to deploy broadband infrastructure. The structure and language of the executive order suggested that the current federal system is overly fragmented with many different agencies, each with its own set of rules. There seems to be very little inter-agency coordination, and possibly contradicting rules that inhibits broadband deployment.

Proactive Policy Making

President Obama and his administration realized that to boost broadband deployment, there is a need to reduce the barriers for companies to install broadband infrastructure on Federal properties and roads. There was a serious need to streamline and harmonize federal regulations and standardize controls, thus making the government more efficient. This would bring about benefits such as cost-savings for private industry and broadband users. However, there is no one single lead agency that takes charge of leasing Federal ROW. It was unlikely that Congress would table this as a governmental agenda, with looming income inequality amidst a stagnating economy.

As the nation’s leader, President Obama had to give a push to various federal agencies to come together to recognize and rectify the issue. By issuing the executive order, President Obama forced the various federal agencies to do just that, through improving government efficiency and providing information on public infrastructure projects to the public. The goal to improve government efficiency also mirrored executive order 13563 on Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review. The provision of information would help carriers time their deployment to periods when streets are already under construction, minimizing the number of re-digging works, and hence the overall construction time, costs and inconvenience.

Since the issuance of the executive order, a GIS mapping tool and inventory of broadband resources were created to assist carriers in broadband deployment. The Federal Highway Administration also published a report on successful broadband deployment in highway ROW.

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